Content Marketing Today

10 Big Content Marketing Lessons in Get Content. Get Customers.

Get content. Get customers., the hardcover edition of the new book that Joe Pulizzi and I have written will be coming out on July 1, 2008. Although it runs a full 200 pages, we have been able to extract some important lessons from the companies we examined.

The range of organizations that we analyzed extended from huge multibillion dollar public companies to midsize companies with a few hundred employees and even to very small single owner organizations.

We know that you will want to run out and buy the book because it is chock-full of content marketing knowledge that you can put to work immediately.

But for now, here are the top 10 content marketing lessons we gleaned from some brilliant content marketing practitioners. These represent the themes that we recognized again and again as we examined how organizations are putting content marketing to work.

1. Only content that is intrinsically valuable to your customers will work as a core component of your content marketing strategy.

2. You must have a thorough understanding of your customers and what is most important to them. If you do not understand the problems and challenges they face, you cannot hope to create content that is truly relevant to them. Without understanding their problems, you cannot provide solutions.

3. A comprehensive content marketing strategy may provide a complete or partial replacement of traditional advertising and marketing. Such a strategy can be both more effective and less expensive than doing things the old-fashioned way.

4. Print magazines can be a powerful weapon within your content marketing arsenal. They enable you to reach out with precision to your customers with carefully targeted messaging that is totally under your control.

5. Great design adds significant value to content marketing by making it more accessible, more appealing, and more actionable for your customers.

6. Your best content marketing investment may be in the creation of a dedicated internal or external team who understand how to produce great content and who live and die by the success of your content marketing program.

7. Drink your own Kool-Aid. Whenever possible, use your own company’s products or services to prove their worth to your customers.

8. Get your customers to participate actively with the content you create in print and online. Begin a conversation and keep it going in order to earn their loyalty and trust.

9. Relevant and valuable content is just the first step in turning a prospect or visitor into a customer. You must then make it easy for them to buy.

10. Most of the best practices from the larger companies we profiled can be emulated in whole or in part even by very small organizations. It’s not the money. It’s the content marketing mindset that counts. Big ideas can trump big bucks.

These lessons are fairly simple to express but much harder to put into practice. That’s why we know you will want to buy the book.

Stay tuned for much more as we near publication.

To learn more about our new book–and to buy a copy–click on Get Content. Get Customers.